Corsair Hydro Series H70 CPU Water Cooling Kit Review

Looking closer at the H70

With the Hydro Series H70 out of the box we can start getting a good look at it. The first thing that jumps out at you is the smaller pump/cold plate. The next is the radiator: same foot print, just thicker. The tubing from the radiator to the water block is shorter this time around as well. The H50 the tubing was about 11″, the H70 it is 9″. The power cable for the pump is nice and long though, it comes in at 12”. Now, how this will affect the installation of the H70? Well, we will see about that in the next section.

The top of the pump/cold plate Corsair has the ship sail logo.

The H70 has 90* swivel fittings that allow the pump/cold plate to have a decent range of motion. Putting the radiator in the top of a case could be doable depending how far the top of the case is away from the CPU socket.

The base comes with a liberal amount of thermal paste pre-applied.

Here we have the base all necked. It’s not the most impressive looking surface, but it is flat.

Like the Hydro Series H50 the radiator can accommodate twin 120mm fans for a push/pull configuration. The radiator is just shy of 6″ tall.

The width comes in at 4-7/8 inches.

The thickness is where the big change is. This time around the radiator is 48mm or 1.8 inches. For those not good with dimensions, the run of the mill 120mm fans are 25mm thick.

It also has a high fin count, 22-23 fins per inch. So, the more the CFM the better.

This time around Corsair is providing two 120mm fans rather than one. The fans themselves are rated at 2000RPM pushing 61CFM at 31.5dBA. Corsair also includes inline resistors to cut the fan back to 1600RPM pushing 50CFM at 26dBA.

Now at first glance the wires are a tad short, only 8”. This is not so good until you start tacking on the speed reducers and the Y adaptor. Then the overall length jumps to 14”. The fans use standard 3 pin connectors so getting extensions or hooking them up to a fan controller will be a snap.